The main aim of this project is to strengthen speculative design education by collecting and exchanging existing knowledge and experience whilst developing new methods in this emerging design field. By creating a transnational strategic partnership, built on different contexts and experiences across Europe, it will create a framework for the exchange of ideas and approaches and develop a Toolkit of resources for speculative design education. In the context of rapidly shifting social, technological, media and economic conditions an increasing number of designers are developing new approaches to design. These “new designers” act on the borders of traditionally defined disciplines, blurring the distinctions between them. In their research, these new designers engage with diverse fields of science, primarily computer sciences and engineering, sociology, psychology, architecture, biotechnology, nanotechnology, etc., with the goal of critically reflecting on the development and role of technology in society. Speculative design is the most significant example of these new design practices focused on “problem finding” rather than “problem solving”. It is a discursive practice, based on critical thinking and dialogue, which questions the practice of design. However, a speculative design approach takes critical practice one step further; towards new future imaginaries or alternative possible trajectories. Through a range of speculative methods, designers re-think alternative products, systems and worlds. Through its imagination and radical approach, speculative design forces one to think – raises awareness, provokes action, initiates discussions and perhaps even offers some alternatives that are essential for the world of today, and more importantly, the world of tomorrow. Main target audiences are educational institutions and PhD and master students (also bachelor) which are interested in investigating relationships between people, society and technology. However, speculative practice has a broader reach and influence. Namely, speculative design could be seen as a tool for society related practices which are important in raising awareness, initiating discussions but also taking actions, outside exclusively design context. On the other hand, there is a growing interest in speculative approaches within the wider design community that reveals the need for new designers in the industrial sector, i.e., in companies employing designers to consider scenarios for future trends and research into the adoption of emerging technologies. Although there are existing speculative design educational programs, regular educational practice is often slow to embrace new approaches and methodologies. There is a need for stronger institutional collaboration in strengthening these novel design educational approaches outside the regular curriculum (educational process). Multinational, multi-partner collaboration offers great context for developing, testing and disseminating novel educational content. In the regular teaching process, there is not often a chance to test new ideas and tools within an intensive context. From educational practice we experience an urgent need for a collection of resources related to this approach, accompanied by further reflective analysis and development. These resources, systematically structured and disseminated, could offer students new design skills for the 21st century, reflexive and critical toward their own practice in order to go beyond the limits of design definitions and to re-think the role of design and designers in today's society. The main objectives of this project are: - to collect, exchange, reflect upon, develop and advance educational practice in the area of speculative design; - to create new (and strengthen existing) partnerships in the field of speculative design education with particular emphasis on forging interactions between designers and experts from other related disciplines; - to support and consolidate speculative design education; - to promote speculative design as educational approach and mode of critical thinking (to academic and broader audience outside design context). Project will organise these three events: - open discussion with experts (multiplier event); - international students workshop (multiplier event); - symposium (multiplier event with exhibition and final dissemination workshop). Project is going to produce three outcomes: - State of the Speculative Design Study: study will describe the current landscape of speculative design and related design practices at the European level - collection of best practices and case-studies; - Speculative Design Textbook: textbook for students but also practitioners, based on the Outcome 1 and reflections/evaluations from the discussion and the workshop. - Speculative Design Open Toolkit: open access online repository based on the Outcome 1 and 2 — to be freely used and maintained by the speculative design communities and networks.
The main aim of this project was to strengthen speculative design education by collecting and exchanging existing knowledge and experience whilst developing new methods in this emerging design field. By creating a transnational strategic partnership, built on different contexts and experiences across Europe, we have created a framework for the exchange of ideas and approaches and developed a Toolkit of resources for speculative design education. Supporting “new designers” who acts on the borders of traditionally defined disciplines, blurring the distinctions between them. In their research, these new designers engage with diverse fields of science, primarily computer sciences and engineering, sociology, psychology, architecture, biotechnology, nanotechnology, etc., with the goal of critically reflecting on the development and role of technology in society. Speculative design is the most significant example of these new design practices focused on “problem finding” rather than “problem solving”. It is a discursive practice, based on critical thinking and dialogue, which questions the practice of design. However, a speculative design approach takes critical practice one step further; towards new future imaginaries or alternative possible trajectories. Via a range of speculative methods, designers re-think alternative products, systems and worlds. Through its imagination and radical approach, speculative design forces one to think – raises awareness, provokes action, initiates discussions and perhaps even offers some alternatives that are essential for the world of today, and more importantly, the world of tomorrow. Our main target audiences were educational institutions and PhD and master students (also bachelor) which are interested in investigating relationships between people, society and technology. However, speculative practice has a broader reach and influence. Namely, speculative design could be seen as a tool for society related practices which are important in raising awareness, initiating discussions but also taking actions, outside exclusively design context. On the other hand, there is a growing interest in speculative approaches within the wider design community that reveals the need for new designers in the industrial sector, i.e., in companies employing designers to consider scenarios for future trends and research into the adoption of emerging technologies. We have conducted a number of activities in order to produce our 3 intellectual outputs: State of Speculative Design Study, a collection of best practices and case-studies; Speculative Design Textbook, a textbook for students and practitioners; and Speculative Design Open Toolkit, an open access online repository. We have collected, exchanged, reflected upon and developed and advanced existed educational practices in the area of speculative design. Moreover, we created new (and upgraded existing) partnerships and created strong community in the field of speculative design education with particular emphasis on forging interactions between designers and experts from related disciplines. Also, we promoted speculative design as educational approach and mode of critical thinking (to academic and broader audience). All partners (and target audience, associate partners) started to implement results in our/their curriculum. We have reached broad public, including non only experts, but more general public and newcomers in this field, on local/regional, European and even international level (from Murska Sobota in Slovenia to Curitiba in Brazil). Interest for all of our events was over all expectations. More then 120 people attented our live events, more then 400 our virtual events, if we add all extra activities organized with the name SpeculativeEdu and not covered from Erasmus+ budget, in partnership with associated partners, we could talk about few thousands of people who got in touch with this project. To sum, project is leaving a strong contribution to the speculative design education and design (in general), with a series of educational resources that we hope will provide newcomers with a thorough introduction to the past, present and future of speculative design and related approaches. Experienced practitioners will have a chance to check in and learn more about diverse approaches, methods and tools, as well as case studies; some of which – due to the radical heterogeneity and interdisciplinarity of the field – they may not previously have been aware. Educators will find a wealth of guidelines, tools, case studies and other sources of inspiration, while students will benefit from a comprehensive and multifaceted overview of the speculative design landscape, across Europe and beyond. Produced resources are available in Beneficiary Project Details web portal.